


An Idle Noise

by cridecoeur



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-01-28
Updated: 2007-01-28
Packaged: 2017-10-20 10:24:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 258
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/211772
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cridecoeur/pseuds/cridecoeur
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What is this silence, he asks himself, that begs a pause between memories of her? Her victrola hums an idle noise, snatches of jazz as the needle skips the groove, as the turntable bumps and the hand crank winds down, slowly down: he does not call it grief.</p>
            </blockquote>





	An Idle Noise

**Author's Note:**

> Minor character death. Don't worry, they don't even have a name in the books. Granted Augustus Rookwood barely has a name in the books. But I still felt the need to write about him.

He finds his mother's hair brush beside her broken mirror: her victrola hums an idle noise, snatches of jazz as the needle skips the groove, as the turntable bumps and the hand crank winds down, slowly down, until silence slides across the room, until he can hear only his own footsteps, muffled in plush carpets, and the twittering of songbirds in his mother's sycamore trees, his grandparent's sycamore trees, his sycamore trees, the ones he climbed, bare-foot and boy-gangly, to snatch delicate blue bird's eggs from their nests; to collect jade beetle wings and downy feathers and soon-pinned butterfly bodies; to watch the muggle children play their slow, dirt games beyond the manor's wards, the child king of an unruly empire.

He plucks up his mother's hairbrush and thinks _she dropped this when she collapsed_ and thinks _the victrola broke when she fell against the table_ and thinks the small, digestible pieces of her death, the final firing of neurons, the electric unbending, the murmuring heart, the bare feet and bruised belly and torn dressing gown, and he does not think _she died_ because that is a failure, that is every victory undone and fed to the silence of her bedroom, to silence within him that is pregnant and growing.

What is this silence, he asks himself, that begs a pause between memories of her? Her victrola hums an idle noise, snatches of jazz as the needle skips the groove, as the turntable bumps and the hand crank winds down, slowly down: he does not call it grief.


End file.
